LESBOS, Greece — Ten-year-old Foual from Gaza is an aspiring polyglot. At the entrance to Kara Tepe, the second-largest refugee camp on Lesbos, he greets visitors in English, German, and Spanish. He knows some Turkish, too, and can almost count to twenty in Greek.

“I’m learning by myself,” Foual says proudly. He has no alternative: there are no formal schools in Greek camps. As a refugee in Lebanon, he attended three years of primary education, but since he arrived in Europe six months ago, he’s been out of school.

Ask parents why they decided to make the journey across the Mediterranean, and most will tell you that they took the risk to ensure a better future for their children. But since the Balkan states closed their borders in March, the thousands of refugee children marooned in Greece have had little or no access to education, despite having reached Europe. They join an estimated 3.5 million refugee children across the globe who are missing out on school.

Starting this month, the Greek government is hoping to change that by enrolling refugees in public schools — but for the past seven months, children in camps have only had access to casual volunteer-run classes.

The [Greek] ministry of education hopes to enrol thousands of refugee children in Greek schools, starting by the end of the month. Of the 27,000 children stranded in Greece, at least 18,000 are thought to be of school age.

“It’s not really a school, just a class,” Foual says of the education project in Kara Tepe. His elder sister, 11-year-old Melek, interrupts: “It’s not like in Lebanon where we had a system and a curriculum. Here, it’s a little Greek, a little English, just one class for an hour a day.”

A lost generation

Rights organisations have long warned of a “lost generation” of refugee children missing out on education. The crisis is particularly dire among Syrians: 1.5 million children who have fled to neighbouring Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon are not in school, creating a surge in child labour and early marriage.

In Greece, the average refugee child has been out of school for a year and a half, according to the NGO Save the Children. Initially, education was not a priority for the Greek government, which has struggled to provide even basic services to the 60,000 asylum-seekers now marooned in the country.

Yet with registration and relocation programmes moving at a snail’s pace, there is a growing realisation that the tens of thousands of asylum-seekers will remain in Greece for some time.

“Things change every week, but we assume they are going to be stuck for a while,” says Naoko Imoto, an education specialist for UNICEF in Greece. “We’re thinking about years, really.”

A refugee boy follows English lessons in a container which has been converted into a classroom at the Skaramangs camp | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

Accordingly, the Greek government has begun planning for the long term. The ministry of education hopes to enrol thousands of refugee children in Greek schools, starting by the end of the month. Of the 27,000 children stranded in Greece, at least 18,000 are thought to be of school age.

A segregated school system

For the current school year, refugee children will be taught separately from Greek students. These so-called “reception classes” will take place in the afternoon, four hours a day, focusing on Greek and English, mathematics and IT.

The aim, the government says, is to prepare the refugee students to join normal classes in the coming year — either in Greece or elsewhere in Europe. For younger children, kindergartens are planned to be opened in camps.

Even though asylum seekers will initially be taught separately from Greek children, the move has been met with opposition. On Tuesday, a parents’ association in the northern Greek town of Filippiada complained about the plan, voicing fears about diseases and arguing that their children would be unable to “coexist with migrant children”.

Refugee children, the parents’ association states, had “different perceptions on the role of family, the place of women and religion to Greek children whose parents have made sacrifices to offer their children the best education.”

The Greek education ministry earlier this month dismissed a complaint from a parents’ association in Oresteiada, another town on the northern mainland, which had threatened a sit-in protest if children from camps were admitted into their school.

Nikos Filis, the education minister, says the integration of refugee children would be “gradual,” and that pupils would be vaccinated before attending public schools. “Hence, there is no serious justification” for the parents’ protests but “only prejudice,” Filis says.

Until the official programme comes into effect, however, volunteers and refugee teachers continue to plug the gap. Makeshift schools have popped up in most camps, but attendance is voluntary, and teaching refugee children come with challenges.

“Some of them never went to school,” says Corien Tiemersma, a Dutch volunteer who has taught English in the Malakasa camp north of Athens, home to nearly a thousand mostly Afghan refugees. “And at the beginning, they weren’t used to sitting down.”

Volunteers

UNICEF’s Imoto hopes that formal education will introduce stability to the lives of children living in limbo in Greece. “It’s urgent that we get these children into school, so that they have an education but also a sense of normalcy and hope,” she says.

Imoto said they were also planning to train refugees who were teachers in their home countries to give classes in the children’s mother tongues, something Greek schools cannot provide. “They are the biggest resource we have,” she says.

Education for her children was her prime motivation for making the perilous crossing to Greece, [Amal Ismail] explains, pouring the tea into glass jars that serve as cups.

In Nea Kavala, a military-run tent camp north of Thessaloniki, refugees and volunteers work side-by-side in the camp’s community centre. Mahmoud Mohammad, a former tailor from Syria’s Kurdish-majority Afrin area, is using his English skills to teach children in the camp.

The school, he says, “is the most important achievement in the camp.” He works alongside five others, including Ragda, a Syrian teacher from Idlib, who has been giving Arabic classes for four months.

“I began volunteering because there are a lot of kids here and they should go to school,” Ragda says. There have been some difficulties, she admits. “There are some Yazidi and Kurdish children who don’t speak Arabic, so I had to teach them Arabic first.”

“I want to study”

But with limited resources and few trained teachers, the Nea Kavala school is unable to provide formal education. Classes run for only two hours a day.

“I want to study. I dropped out at eighth grade in Syria,” says Rewan, a 15-year-old refugee from Afrin who has been in Nea Kavala for six months. “But there’s no real school. It’s an hour a day plus language classes, and the first level includes everyone from first to eighth grade.”

A few tent rows away, Amal Ismail, a Kurdish woman from Aleppo, boils water for tea in a rusty tin. Her children, three girls and a boy, have missed out on years of school; her 11-year-old son worked with her husband in a clothing factory in Turkey’s Izmir for two years to support the family.

Education for her children was her prime motivation for making the perilous crossing to Greece, she explains, pouring the tea into glass jars that serve as cups. They had been in Nea Kavala for seven months.

“We lived in fear in Syria,” she says. “We thought we’d be free of fear in Europe. But here, we’re afraid our children will never go to school and learn.”

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Johann M. Wolff

“Refugee children get little education in Europe”

Lesson: they should stay home.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 9:25 AM CEST

Jay

So another burden we have to take upon, within the year providing a quarter million children of education. And we probably are not allowed to separate them from the European children, so they will learn nothing any more while these refugee children learn a new language and learn how to read and wright. And we probably have to pay for it as well? Nuts.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 10:25 AM CEST

Franny

Come on Germany pull your weight. You invited them now you should pay for their education and well being.Disgraceful.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 12:23 PM CEST

Johann F.

Not our children, not European children, not even invited guests. They’re lucky they haven’t been put back in their boats and towed out to sea – yet.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 6:37 PM CEST

Pooolish guuuy

“Refugee children”….lie from beginning..
They are children of illegal migrants…Parents and country where they come from are responsible for theirs education..

Posted on 9/26/16 | 7:02 PM CEST

Deb

You can’t invite them and not look after them. If you accept refugees you are responsible for them and their children. Sort it out Europe. If the resources or will is not their why in the hell did you invite all and sundry to come? It is a disgrace. Bottling them up in jungle camps so you don’t have to deal with them is inhumane.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 8:46 PM CEST

Jay

No-one invited them except for mufti Merkel, 1 nutcase, that’s it. So not our(all the other countries) problem.

Posted on 9/26/16 | 11:04 PM CEST

Larsen

@Jay

It’s a club Jay, you have to accept the good and not so good. No cherry picking I’m afraid. Our leaders signed up and we must accept decisions. These poor children need help and we must mobilize a humanitarian motion to help.

Posted on 9/27/16 | 10:55 PM CEST

CSK

@Larsen

I agree with your sentiments about the children. They know next to nothing of why their lives have been so seriously disrupted and the danger is that if they do not receive an education and some normalcy in their lives, they will be left to drift, be unemployable and their lives will be wasted, with all the consequences that that entails!
The problem in Europe is the sheer numbers that have arrived and over a relatively short period of time. This is a logistical nightmare for all concerned; money is desperately needed in EU areas that can ill afford to provide the amenities and services required. Brussels must step up to this problem; they can certainly afford summits at the drop of a hat, but to put the money to better use eludes them.
Politicians really do have to sort out the mess that brought the refugees here in the first place, and the pressure that is felt by a Europe that is still reeling from a financial crisis; it is totally understandable why people’s patience is wearing thin. But their priority has to be the stabilisation of the children, and to try to give them at least a chance for a future whereby the vast majority will be grateful for the chance that they had been given. Many will no doubt want to return to their devastated countries to help rebuld them and others will contribute to the well-being of the countries that adopted them – history has borne this out.
Adults caused this mess and adults should at least try to help the future generations. How many refugee children have been lost and separated from their parents in this deplorable nightmare so far?
No, Europe didn’t ask for this problem and the politicians’ actions so far have proved utterly lamentable – but common sense and common humanity must come to the fore, if only for the sake of the future generations.

Posted on 9/27/16 | 11:31 PM CEST

Jay

@Larsen
So I will work and pay while they do nothing? Fine club that is, let their parents work for their education and let refugee teachers teach them. Again, not my problem and I want nothing to do with that club of yours.

Posted on 9/28/16 | 9:28 AM CEST

Sufferd

Horrific and astonishing reading the comments below. Inane and xenophobic people in a diverse and multicultural EU: like Hillary so pointledly said a “basket of deplorables”
I’m glad that in my country, the Netherlands, all these children get an education on par with our own to prepare them for life and being a worthwhile and happy human being.
It’s not their fault being refugee!

Posted on 9/28/16 | 1:40 PM CEST

Larsen

@CSK
Very well put. Thank you

@Sufferd
Indeed, Other countries also have integrated refugees into their schools also and I’m sure other countries have too. Sweden and the UK does as well. This may be contributed to the UK distate so much with the EU a little bit? I am shocked that countries have allowed this to happen. Thankfully some countries have not forfeited their own values when put under a little pressure.

Please everyone else remember, these are innocent children.

Posted on 9/28/16 | 3:19 PM CEST

den

@Larsen @Sufferd

Always remember that the most noise comes from the vocal minority. It is illegal in the UK for any child to not receive an education. It is not even an issue. They’d be placed into school as a matter of urgency. The UK education system faces lots of challenges but this isn’t one of them.

Shame on those that have wantonly failed these children.

Posted on 9/28/16 | 3:51 PM CEST

Theresa

@Pooolish guuuy

So what? It would be an outrage to treat an animal the way some of you propose to treat these children. Shame on you all.

Posted on 9/28/16 | 6:20 PM CEST

Johann M. Wolff

@Theresa

Are you with your taxes net contributor or net receiver to the state ?
Or you just know best what should be done with other people’s money meanwhile endangering their security.

@Sufferd
As far as the polls go, I can see the next government in Holland made up by a right wing and a far-right party. Reason ? attitude like yours, trying to force one’s “values” on others meanwhile calming the moral superiority.

@den
Well, again, polls show that the overwhelming majority of the Germans (above 80%) disagree with Merkel’s open dor policy meanwhile more than half of the country thinks that Islam doesn’t have place in Germany. So who is the local minority ?